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2018: 3/4 million+ Visitors/Readers! This blog was ranked #49 in top 100 blogs about adoption. Let's make it #1...

The first video is here, and features Quinault President Fawn Sharp
and her family. Deepest thanks to her for being a leader unafraid to
share her story to help Native families.

The Indian Child Welfare Act was borne out of the forced removal of one
out of every three children from their homes in the late 1970’s. This
issue is far from ancient history, as we continue to see the devastating
effects of non-compliance with ICWA. That is why at NICWA, we are
committed to keeping families together.

Becky (second video) contributed her story to the anthology STOLEN GENERATIONS... We thank everyone for making this series... AHO! MEGWETCH!

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Changes ordered in '48-hour hearings' involving Native children

South
Dakota and Pennington County officials must make changes in their
handling of temporary custody hearings involving Native American
children as the result of judgments issued Thursday by the U.S. District
Court.

The suit, filed in
2013 by Native American parents and the Oglala and Rosebud Sioux tribes,
claimed that procedures in the state’s so-called 48-hour hearings
violated the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The defendants are the
Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office, the state Department of
Social Services and the 7th Circuit Court.

An
attorney for the plaintiffs, Dana Hanna, said the decision by Chief
Judge Jeffrey Viken will “radically and fundamentally” change the way
the hearings are being conducted, adding that the changes are supposed
to take effect immediately.

In March 2015, Viken found
that local court procedures violated Native American rights by not
advising parents they had a right to contest the state’s petition for
temporary custody and by not requiring the state to present live sworn
testimony from a witness.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Federal grant for UMD aims to help Native American children

Minnesota has the most
disproportionate rate in the country of Native American children in
foster care, and St. Louis County's rate is among the worst in the
state.

The
University of Minnesota Duluth's social work department has been
tackling that issue for some time, and was just awarded one of three
federal grants to further its work.

The U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services awarded a five-year grant to UMD worth more than $2
million to create a better delivery system for the Indian Child Welfare
Act, a federal law meant to keep Native American kids with Native
American families.

"People in the systems care a lot about
children and families, but there is something about the way the system
is responding that is leading to high levels of disparity," said
Priscilla Day, director of the Center for Regional and Tribal Welfare at
UMD, and head of the university's social work department.The
center will lead the work and partner with Duluth's 6th Judicial
District, St. Louis County Public Health and Human Services, the
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Leech Lake Tribal
Court and both the Fond du Lac and Grand Portage bands of Lake Superior
Chippewa.

UMD has been working with the county and local court
system for several years as part of another grant to see how Indian
child welfare cases are handled and to try to make that work more
effective. The national grant was a chance to further those efforts. The
ultimate goal, Day said, is to devise a system of policies and
practices for social workers, the court system, tribes and the county to
use when dealing with Indian child welfare cases.

"This isn't
about blaming or pointing fingers," Day said, but about better outcomes
for kids. The goal is to establish methods that can be used across the
country.

The project likely will involve studying data and how it
is or isn't shared between schools, tribes and the county. It could look
at neglect — a driver of high numbers — and whether intervention can
take place before it leads to a report, Day said. And training in
historical trauma will most certainly be a part of it, building on
training that already is being done.

"My grandmother was taken out
of her family when she was 4 years old and sent to a boarding school,"
Day said, referring to federal boarding schools where Native American
children were forced to assimilate, forbidden to use their native
language. "That certainly impacted the way she went on to parent,
because she missed all those formative years of interacting with a
parent. And I am sure that impacted my parent. And so it goes on and
on."

Boarding schools also introduced neglect and physical and
sexual abuse. But native families are resilient, and many are working to
revitalize cultural ways and traditions, she said, which is why it's so
important to try to keep native children with their families as much as
possible, and within their communities, if it's not.

The county
is hoping for better coordination of responses to child safety and
protection issues, and those that are culturally responsive. Are
searches for relatives rigorous enough; is the Indian child welfare law
being followed in the placement of kids? Those are questions that will
be studied, said Holly Church, division director for children and family
services for St. Louis County's public health and human services.

The
idea is to reduce the disproportionality the county is seeing with
out-of-home placements, and to find ways to stabilize families and get
them the support they need.

"We want to see more kids remain in
the family home, and for those kids who do need placement, we want them
to be able to be with relatives when at all possible and to hasten
unification of the family when kids are placed out of the home," Church
said.

There are several barriers stemming from historical trauma
that helped lead to the disproportionality, Church said, citing poverty,
addiction, mental health, racism and a lack of resources to deal with
those things.

"On top of that, we have a lot of work to do as a
child protection workforce to continue to build our ability to work in
culturally responsive ways with Native American families," she said,
noting an already strong partnership with UMD, which has educated some
of the Native American social workers on the county's staff.

"This
is a really important issue to us," Church said. "It's a significant
part of our work with families, and that's why we continue to devote a
lot of time and energy ... to try to reduce these disparities."The project is called Jii-Anishinaabe-Bimaatiziwag Partnership Project, which means "so they can live the Indian way of life."

June 2016, Federal Regulations released (Became Binding on December 12)

December 2016, Updated Guidelines replacing the February 2015 Guidelines

What this means:
25 USC 1901 et seq (ICWA) has not changed in 1978, and provides the
minimum federal standards for Indian families. State ICWA laws (and
corresponding court rules) that provide higher standards still apply.
The federal Regulations are now binding and are like the federal law.
The December 2016 Guidelines are now in effect and non-binding
interpretation of the Regulations.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Historians want to mobilize reparation efforts for California
sterilization victims who suffered under a government mandated program
in the early 1900’s. A new American Journal of Public Health report
titled, “California’s Sterilization Survivors: An Estimate and Call for
Redress,” examines the scope of the state’s sterilization
recommendations. Sterilization was an option spurred by eugenics–a
controversial practice aimed…

Autumn, the beginning of the school
year, is the cruelest season for Native American students in the United States.
Between sports games where entire crowds chant about "redskins" and
other school mascots and the federal holiday of the Indian-killing mercenary
Christopher Columbus, there is the misguided national celebration of
"Thanksgiving" to mark the arrival of the religious Europeans, who
set the stage for Native American genocide.

These rituals dominate the first
months of school, putting Native children in their place, holding up the
traditions of white children, and championing the ideals of white supremacy and
imperialism. As November's recognition of Native American Heritage Month ends,
educators should resist the urge to regurgitate the usual narrative and instead
discuss the reality of life, historical and current, for the more than 600,000 Native American students in our nation's
K-12 public schools.

In researching and writing "All
the Real Indians Died Off," our book about Native American myths and
misconceptions, my co-author Dina Gilio-Whitaker and I were aware of how these
Native American stereotypes affect all children in schools today. Internalizing
harmful images most acutely damages Native children, but absorbing racist and
dehumanizing ideas about fellow classmates also diminishes the understanding
and compassion of non-Native children, warping their conception of a history
that often erases Native Americans altogether.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Practiced in many Native American cultures, the Blessingway
Ceremony was traditionally held to honor major life transitions. During
late pregnancy and to prepare for birth, an important rite of passage
for women, a woman's close female friends would host a Blessingway
Ceremony to honor her transition into motherhood. This initiation helps
to prepare a woman physically, mentally and spiritually for her journey
through birth and into motherhood. It allows her to strengthen her
social support, which she will need to nourish her postpartum, and to
deepen the bonds that she has with her community of support.

Do your own Blessingway
Ceremony: Invite a group of women friends/relatives for a relaxing time
to share food, pamper mom-to-be and honor the new baby who is making
the way to join the circle.

60s Scoop Settlement

Dawnland 2018

where were you adopted?

Every. Day.

adoptees take back adoption narrative and reject propaganda

#WeShallContinue

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

Join!

National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network (NISCWN)

Membership Application Form

The Network is open to all Indigenous and Foster Care Survivors any time.

Read this SERIES

our new book trailer

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

TWO WORLDS Book 1 (second edition)

v

Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

“The individual pieces are open and honest and give a good insight into the turmoil of dislocation from family and tribe… I think it does have value and a story to tell. I was affected by the stories I read, and amazed by the facts presented…. because it is saying something new, interesting and often astonishing.”

Did you know?

Good words

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

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